Journalism and Media Studies Lecturer at Wits University. Master of Arts in Digital Documentary from the University of Sussex. A former journalist at eNCA, Reuters, AFP and The Citizen.
The fragility of life and the devaluation of individual lives in South African society swung on a pendulum throughout the 288-page stage that this memoir played out on.
For transparency’s sake, I must declare that I am a certified Redi Thlabi stan, she’s an incredible journalist and thinker I have always looked up to, and that no doubt coloured my reading somewhat. I picked my copy up at a recent book sale by publisher, Jacana, for a steal (one of those pay-per-kilogram sales – best!) Knowing Thlabi’s public persona quite well, I went in with quite specific assumptions about what her memoir might be like, and boy was I wrong on every count. Nothing could have prepared me for the twisted tale of a great first love marred by violence, manipulation and neglect. Sjoe, I was never ready shem.
Without giving away much more of the plot, I will say that the story that unfolds won’t be difficult to summon into ones imagination, Thlabi writes with a careful balance of honesty, warmth and clarity that transports you to the same street corners, the end of longing stares and swirls of despair that she experienced. It’s a reminder of how complex human beings and human relationships can be. Thlabi illustrates just how thin the line is between our precious inner lives and the relived realities that threaten it day and night. Grief stalks the pages from start to finish, the intensity of it varied from part to part and chapter to chapter, but ever present nonetheless.
Without being glaringly obvious about it, a geographic and historical profile of Soweto is sketched and helps root readers in place. The passage of time can also be seen through the lens of the location itself, ensuring that the past and present are delineated well. The lives of ordinary South Africans (and Southern Africans) during Apartheid always fascinate me, because they help us fill in the gaps that pure political and historical accounts can not. One of my favourite parts of the memoir was an account of how a central character risked life and limb to do his bit to assist in the anti-Apartheid movement. I appreciate accounts like this because the collective memory of our history can be narrow and solely focused on the people with bridges and buildings named after them, which is a distortion of how many truly played their part to fight off an oppressive regime.
Would I read it again? Nah uh. While intensely personal and revealing, I think it’s the kind of work that doesn’t necessitate revisiting when you are done reading it. Much like Khwezi, Thabi’s second book, it winds you so much that the very idea of bracing for impact again just doesn’t seem possible. But like Khwezi, it is a masterclass in using deep listening and authentic connection to navigate through one’s curiosity and sense of justice.
“Turn the lights off!” Before May 21, 2025 that phrase had much sexier connotations in my head, now, unfortunately, it is a reminder of the very strange ‘meeting’ between President Cyril Ramaphosa and that guy in the Oval Office. While I have appreciated and gobbled up all the analysis that followed that strange encounter in the last few weeks, something was still amiss. Memes, gags and retweets about the encounter, to be specific. This event was the first time I sincerely missed the bird app since deleting it from my phone last year.
Have I known peace, absolutely. It has been freeing to be rid of the watered-down, oft-triggering and anti-intellectual ‘discourse’ that had come to dominate my Twitter feed. Since the Musk takeover, the algorithm on that app has become most unhelpful and uninformative, making an occasionally toxic and divisive environment, perpetually so by boosting the accounts and thoughts of the most harmful actors in the swamp (himself included).
Anyway, that wasn’t the point of this little scribble. The point was, on that chilly Wednesday evening, I sat listening, enthralled by the shenanigans with no public place to live tweet and banter about the increasingly bizarre events coming through my speakers all the way from Washington DC. I was glued to the radio live feed in my car and couldn’t risk running out of the car, into the house to catch the visual feed in fear of missing even one second of the special episode of WWE. Itching to say something, anything, I turned to my almost inactive Threads account to cash in on the adrenaline that was coursing through me. I made a handful of posts, forgetting in my glee-come-horror at what I was hearing, to actually thread my posts together. But minutes passed with not a like, a retweet, a reply or GIF-only response. That’s when it hit me, that damn, Twitter is really gone and the live back and forths I had become accoustomed to during particulaarly important socio-political events and moments, could not simply be replicated on a different app. Sure, my following and level of activity on Threads probably plays a role, but that used to be the beauty of Twitter, you didn’t have to be ‘somebody’ to hop in on a trending conversation and simply by being vocal be seen by others interested in that conversation.
As someone who had been on Twitter for 14 years, using it professionally as a journalist and socially as a loudmouth, the relative silence during a live news event left me a little sad. Selfishly, for entertainment’s sake. But there was also magic in the way we collectively processed the world around us. As South Africans, primarily through laughter and making light of what is often too heavy. Threads did eventually ‘catch up’ the next day, filling my timeline with more post-meeting reactions, but the moment was gone, and my thumbs were at ease.
I know the internet girlies tell us we should never spin the block, but let me tell you that doesn’t count for books and the second or third or fourth time is often better than the first.
I first read Alain de Botton’s Essays in Love some eight or so years ago when I joined a new book club shortly after moving to Cape Town to start a new gig and life. I remembered laughing and nodding along a lot, so I decided to pick it up again when I needed a pick me up a while back. My slim recollection was correct, I laughed and nodded along more upon my second read. Time and one too many relatable experiences also made sure that I cried a bit too this time around.
As someone who often has to imbibe whatever can be learned about relationships through external media and anecdotes, the writing style in this book invited an intimacy which placed me in the middle of the room when they were fighting, alongside him on taxi rides and embedded in the neural networks that carried his stream of consciousness. De Botton allows us to be flies on the wall, inviting us into this relationship and its journey from start to end. With chapter titles like ‘The Fear of Happiness’, ‘Romantic Terrorism’ and ‘Psyco-Fatalism’ one is never too far from learning some cool historical and philosophical insights while relating to the more personal linkages. The numbered paragraphs in said chapters initially look like an odd choice but it actually helped move the narrative along quite neatly.
The critique of modern love and our strange passage through it remains my most memorable takeaway from this book; it is reflective and honest about what it takes to be with another person and highlights the inner conflicts that ultimately make/break such unions. Upon a second read, I probably like it more now than I did as the hopeful romantic I was when I read it some eight years ago.
Mother City by Miki Redelinghuys and Pearlie Joubert received its World Premiere at Sheffield DocFest 2024 and our writer Pheladi Sethusa had the chance to see it in Johannesburg during a screening hosted by the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation.
The more things change, the more they stay the same – Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr
It has been thirty years since the end of Apartheid in South Africa, yet the freedoms of democracy remain distant for most. The wonderful, world-renowned rights enshrined in the constitution remain fable-like to the poorest, who still have to fight for even the smallest bit of justice and dignity in their daily lives.
However, the date most people are familiar with when it comes to this country’s history, is 1994, which marked the transition from white minority rule to a fully-fledged democracy. One which was meant to undo the injustices of the past and guarantee basic human rights for all its people.
Through the life of Reclaim the City campaigner, Nkosikhona “Face” Swartbooi, the story of what dispossession means to those who live and work in the City of Cape Town unfolds over an hour and forty minutes. He narrates his experiences and those of his fellow activists and reclaimers at Ahmed Kathrada House in Green Point and Cissie Gool House in Woodstock. The social movement operates under the slogan: “Land for people not for profit”, and has sustained two of the longest-standing occupations of vacant buildings in the city centre since 2017.
It is not a first-person documentary, but the filmmakers’ intimacy and proximity to the activists makes one experience it as such. The time spent in internal strategy meetings, inside reclaimed buildings, and in public confrontations with politicians helps put viewers in the heart of the fight for affordable social housing in Cape Town. Shot freehand and off the shoulder for the most part, authenticity is quickly established and maintained as the film ebbs and flows through dense legal challenges and heartbreaking personal narratives.
The film confronts the legacy of Apartheid spatial planning, town planning which deliberately and forcefully removed Black, Coloured, Indian and Asian people from city centres and suburbs to the outskirts. Close enough to provide reliable, cheap labour but far enough that when the work was over, they remained out of sight. The areas people were relocated to were often derelict and devoid of access to services – a fact that remains true today.
The people who live in these two buildings are ordinary South Africans who had until the occupation remained financially and physically locked out of formal housing ‘opportunities’ (as the government calls them) by being held on stagnant housing lists. South Africa is one of the most unequal countries in the world, and that still largely manifests itself across racial lines. The monthly minimum wage in the country is about R 5 400 ($315), while the average rental for a one-bedroom apartment in the city of Cape Town is R 9 370 ($547). For anyone who lives outside of the City Bowl, transport ranges between R2 000 ($116) and R4 000 (233) a month. It’s clear that the math ain’t mathing and that this financial exclusion is segregation by another name.
From start to finish, people desperate for change and dignity are met with “be patient” from deflecting politicians, “this is not how it’d done” from irritated locals, and “move, now” followed by undue violence from angry property owners. The housing problem highlighted by activists builds in intensity through their sustained action (occupations and protests) and the city’s inaction as the film comes to a devastating and ultimately fatal climax at the hands of chronic neglect.
One of the most affecting cinematic devices in the documentary is the original score by Edward George King and Charl-Johan Lingenfelder. It swells and quiets in all the right places, making incredibly difficult and traumatic subject matter easier to wade through on the back of its accompaniment. Coupled with the six years of careful and intimate documentation of the movement, this film serves as a witness to the violence of poverty, inequality and systematic racism. It asks those watching to move beyond passivity and indifference about an issue that seemingly doesn’t affect them, to consider human dignity as an unequivocal right they can play an active role in securing for themselves and others.
Finally developed another roll of film – averaging about a year a roll – lol. Have just bought some more film so hoping to change this habit quite quickly and take my camera along on every adventure, big or small, I embark on in the next few months.
This roll covered quite a bit of ground, it travelled with me to a speed dating event, a road trip and girls’ weekend away in the Vaal, an especially magical few days in Cape Town, a side quest to a botanical garden at a conference in Stellenbosch and a final trip with my class of postgraduate students at Constitutional Hill. Very different but very special memories.
I love how much more selective I am when shooting on film, and which moments feel special enough to etch onto film, I’ve missed the intimacy with memory this brings. Additionally, the imperfection in some of my frames feels almost signature and unshackles me for a moment from the obsessive need to have the right f stop, focus and ISO with each shot – something I am trying to unlearn as I shift between shooting on an SLR and my film camera.
I listened to an full audiobook for the very first time and let me say up front – I actually enjoyed it so much! Before this experience I was a little anti where audiobooks were concerned, imagining that it must be ‘cheating’ and a grating experience akin to listening to the world’s longest podcast. But it was neither of those things.
Choosing to listen to this book by Daniel Black rather than read it was a choice driven by convenience, the cost of living crisis and a book club meeting less than a week away. A softcover copy would have set me back R700, while the audiobook was free to listen to Everand with their 30-day free trail (which I forget to cancel and led to a loud ‘FUCK’ in the middle of a set of leg presses at the gym last night when the bank notification popped up) and promised to only take up 7 hours and 28 minutes. And boy did those seven hours fly by – I was THOROUGHLY entertained from the onset and throughout.
Read by the author himself, I noted that the cadences and timing were always spot on, there were one or two audible editing/recording flashes but not noticeable enough to ruin any part of the experience. In a nutshell, this is a tale about a father and son’s complicated relationship, told from the oft times problematic point of view of a dying father. It felt honest in sometimes cringeworthy ways, but I really liked that because that is human. The narrator is deeply flawed and in the parts where he can’t or won’t recognise that in himself, we are afforded the freedom to colour in for ourselves – which is the best part of reading for me. No two people interpret or experience a passage, a chapter, a whole book the same way and that’s so cool to me.
Anyway back to the book, I was particularly struck, again, by just how recent slavery was. That some people and their parents and were raised on plantations within the last 100 years. The periodization makes it easier to understand Jacob as a (by)product of his environment and circumstances. He can’t help but be the man he is, despite sometimes knowing better, acting against that better judgement and honouring his true feelings. It is unfortunately too relatable in parts (domestic abuse, racism, homophobia, sexism – all the ism’s really).
As I listened along, bookmarking some of my favourite bits was really easy on the app, transcribing them for the purposes of this post not as much.
I would love to read this again (or for the first time if we are to be pedantic), really enjoy the exploration of black fatherhood and the level of grace it forces one to extend as a result.
Trying to make the ‘best bits’ a permanent feature of my literary postmortems, mostly because there are so many passages, sentences, phrases that stay with us beyond the initial reading.
In this read, technically speaking, the whole book is a ‘best bit’ but copyright laws are a thing so I have highlighted just ten moments that gave me pause.
You shouldn’t have to survive your parents. You shouldn’t have to survive yourself. Least of all when you are fighting tooth and nail to survive South Africa.
Lesedi Molefi’s memoir Patient 12A, is a raw and emotive account of just that. But it’s not just that — intermingled with survival is a life underscored by candour, love and intense optimism.
Set at the Akeso Clinic in Parktown, Johannesburg, Molefi unravels his 21-which-turns-into-24-day passage at the private mental health institution and the two decades on the run from, and with, his family that necessitated him checking in in the first place.
Passages of mind: Lesedi Molefi’s memoir Patient 12A explores his battle with mental illness. Photo: Thabiso Molatlhwa/Richart Productions
Some of the factors include parental abandonment; managing the symptoms and consequences of undiagnosed mental health issues and constant uprootedness and hunger.
Tipping the scales ever so slightly, and perched on the other side of these circumstances, is loyalty, creativity and unbridled self-belief.
With my previous insights into stays at mental health facilities limited to the accounts in Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar and Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, I had braced myself for coldness and rigidity, but was pleasantly surprised and relieved when, instead, the walls that house this clinic were safe and warm. This is because of something unique — the people Molefi finds there, a “cross-section of ordinary South Africans”, as he calls them.
Together they parse their traumas, relate and commune authentically.
Running alongside formal treatment sessions and various forms of therapy, this community of patients provides another lifeline to, and through, one another.
But it isn’t all kumbaya — the clinic and its patients still mirror the stratified, unequal society they are sheltering from.
South Africa still slips under the doors and colours some tough discussions about who gets to hurt and be hurt based on their race, gender and prevailing stigmas, proving the South African condition is inescapable.
The circumstances that led other patients to the clinic include drug abuse, domestic abuse, grief and self-harm in its various forms. The trauma that informs their inner lives reflects the lived realities of millions of people in this country.
Abuse of power, the violence of poverty, chronic neglect and broken interpersonal and familial relationships are common threads.
This external backdrop of extreme inequality, and the violence thereof, must be surmounted daily, an impossible task for anyone, much less someone without the socioeconomic resources that afford one relative safety, space and access to process with grace and dignity.
The most ubiquitous and immersive device in the memoir is “the noise”, the literary and internal universe Molefi steeps us in.
The noise emanates both from him and through him. It is a whirlpool of his consciousness and internal struggles, used to transport us fluidly from the past to the present with careful clarity.
While he describes the noise as chaotic and disruptive, for those reading this work, the noise is an expert and intimate guide through the passage of his mind.
The complicated thoughts and feelings that colour and blur his cognition help readers to identify where and how they intersect, overlap and relate to the vast array of pain points chronicled.
At the launch of Patient 12A a few weeks ago, and in subsequent interviews, the author has been at pains to emphasise that this isn’t a self-help book. He goes out of his way to avoid listicles and passages filled with advice and definitions from medical and psychology journals.
But through the careful reconstruction of tobacco-stained conversations in an inner-city courtyard, he does the work of inviting people to see themselves through his personal anguish and through the highly relatable experiences of the other patients “doing time”.
Without spoiling it for anyone yet to read it, the memoir’s true heartbeat and nerve centre — and by extension Molefi’s — are his mother and sisters. From a very young age he is driven and compelled to protect them, but he can’t, and that inability taints every attempt at a semblance of normality — something he yearns for from their first uprooting through to their last.
Initially, one can be taken by the adventure that swirls around the first few “trips” their mother takes Molefi and his siblings on, the promise of greener pastures. But it soon turns into concern and quiet rage when you realise that the four of them are in fact being dragged from one terrible situation to the next.
Homelessness and hunger are always assured but not much else. The children try to grapple with their mother’s simmering mental illness and keep one another fed, educated and away from the monsters that lurk in the shadows as they move from one precarious place to the next.
The scars of their experiences play out in different ways and at different stages for each of them but Molefi articulates his payoff as “a strange education”.
By the time he is in his twenties, he is a master of survival — not quite the education he wanted but the one that has carried him thus far.
My copy of the book is dog-eared, tatted up in orange highlighter, has travelled on planes and trains, and watched me drink copious amounts of coffee as I struggled to put it down.
What really carries one through the 408 pages is Molefi’s ability to write about pain and trauma with a level of honesty and vulnerability that invites one in and that, quietly, asks one to look at him in the context of “the facts of his life”, directly in the eyes — and not look away when he shows you who he is.
Through the whispers and shouts of the noise, Molefi speaks himself back to life.
It is prose, it is poetry, it is beautiful.
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Patient 12A is published by Pan Macmillan South Africa.
“What the actual?!” I have never said and thought this phrase more than I have in the last month reading Raven Leilani’s Luster.
I recently described it as ‘very fucked up and difficult to read, but the beautiful sentences have made me stay the course’ – I probably phrased it less eloquently at the time but that’s what I thought when taking in the 227 pages that often felt like an exaggerated pitch for an HBO show (you know, dimly lit with all of the fucked up sex and drugs).
In short: Edie is a traumatized, touch-starved, poverty-stricken artist, who starts an affair with a very boring, middle-aged married man (I think his name was Tom, no James, no Michael, no no Eric – see, unmemorable at best). In the middle of their punch-me-fuck-me shenanigans, Eric’s wife, Rebecca (who we are told knows about the affair) moves Edie into the marital home on the day she has quite literally hit rock bottom, with no job, no money and nowhere to live.
The move isn’t benevolent, Rebecca wants someone, someone Black, to act as some kind of hand-holding older sister to her adopted Black daughter. The whole thing is insane. Edie has nowhere else to go, so she stays. Carries on with that man, befriends the daughter (Akila – who is arguably the only person I even liked and rooted for on this whole thing), and lives off random monetary offerings Rebecca leaves her – until she falls pregnant.
As I said, story-wise – hated it, Edie was living through the wound from onset and throughout. I suppose her upbringing was the catalyst for some of the chaos that was her lived experience, to be fair she couldn’t make better choices because she often didn’t have the liberty to truly choose. But Raven is such a good writer that I stayed the course despite myself to find more of her tragic, curt and heart-wrenching sentences and passages. Some of my “best bits” below:
Write. Snap. Click. 